


upside-down triangle in a circle

by solq



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Disturbing, Gen, Horror, Oneshot, set after chapter 29
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26714956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solq/pseuds/solq
Summary: You'll never escape me.or: Shikako doesn't recover from falling into the black.
Relationships: Nara Shikako & Nara Shikamaru
Comments: 6
Kudos: 139
Collections: Heliocentrism — a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection





	upside-down triangle in a circle

**Author's Note:**

> set after chapter 29 of dreaming of sunshine.
> 
> please heed the "creator chose not to use archive warnings". check the endnotes for cw.

The numbness never truly goes away.

There's always a strange lilt to her voice, an awkward shift in her gait, an unnatural blankness covering her face.

When she looks down at her hands, they don't quite seem like hers anymore. Nor does the face in the mirror. All the bits connected together that make up this person are just limbs and body parts, not her. 

She can't quite remember them ever being right. Really, they were never truly her, always stolen from someone that never existed until they did. 

When she raises a hand or pulls out a kunai she can't quite get over the surprise to see the foreign limbs respond to her distant commands. And when she speaks, says a word, even merely a 'yes' or 'no', it's unexpected when the noise reaches her ears and she realises it came from the mouth that is hers.

Shikamaru hates it.

Despite his ever-present slouch and bored expression, he can't quite hide his unease; the tension in his posture and the tightening of his jaw. He can never look her in the eye either.

He tries. 

Often, he drags her to practice with Team 10. Ino pretends not to notice, chatters on about nothing. Chouji smiles and offers her snacks. 

Asuma looks on, cigarette hanging out of his mouth. His brow furrows whenever she catches him watching.

The shadows whisper to her. 

She squishes an ant with her thumb.

During their practice, she spends the time sitting on the sidelines staring into the darkness. 

They sway and swell and deepen and darken as the daylight changes. She almost has the pattern memorised; it's hypnotising.

And her shadow is the only thing that feels like her. Everything else is mere trappings, a means to an end. The body creates the shadow and that is all. 

The shadows tell her that soon she won't need the body anymore.

But everytime she leans into that deep, darkness, the inky abyss in the depths of nothing, it always sinks deeper; just past the ends of her touch, tantalisingly out of reach.

"Shikako!"

And a frantic hold drags her back out, like being woken from a deep sleep only to realise she was never asleep at all. The sun is bright. It washes away the shadows that had covered her only a second ago.

Warm hands touch her face, ask her _what did you do? kako, say something_ , she stares back.

The deep darkness calls to her.

She can't quite leave when the warm hands feel like they're anchoring her mind to the body it resides in.

Shikamaru ends training early.

He takes her back home, holds her hand tightly as he waits for father to arrive.

She watches out the window as a bird falls from the sky and hits the ground.

When father does arrive, he is calm. He speaks slowly and carefully, calloused hands checking for injury. Gentle chakra sweeps over her body and her shadow, quieting it's whispers.

Once he is done, an aching emptiness overtakes everything else. Her shadow is suddenly barely there, pale and see-through. She blinks, and it flickers like a dying candle.

It will come back. It always does.

The cleanse never lasts long.

When Kakashi-sensei finds out, he barely reacts. Distantly, she wonders whether she spent enough time with him to make him care, or whether he decided to shut her out of his heart the moment he realised she was already lost to him. Distantly, she wonders whether she cares.

She doesn't see him much anymore anyway. Not that she remembers.

Sasuke takes it better than she would have thought. Or worse. She can't read his expressionless face, doesn't try to. He devotes himself entirely to training, says little, smiles even less. She should be upset, she thinks, but she is not. There's nothing to be upset about.

This is Sasuke, she thinks. This is the Sasuke she remembers. This is right.

Naruto takes it as Naruto takes anything. In stride and completely out of stride. He denies it, tells her _I'm gonna fix it and you better believe it!_ grabs her hand and tries to spar and race up trees and run across the river. 

She realises he's always been a little insane.

But when they're around, she can never find the deep, solid, _living grasping alive_ entity in the middle of the shadows.

The body feels a little more like hers then.

The shadow tells her to stay away.

So she does.

At home, she listens to her mother fretting and whispering and screaming at her father while Shikamaru holds her close, falling asleep quickly. He's tired often. She only feels cold.

As the abyss draws closer and the whispers grow louder, she spends her days in the shadows of the forest on the outskirts of konoha, away from the teams and the teachers and parents and everyone else. 

When the moon rises, the abyss widens, large and inviting, with whispers and sweet promises and comforting inky shadows. 

She slashes the throat of an old deer. the blood drips into the abyss. It's thirsty, she thinks. She balances on the rim, peering inside, watching the nothing and the everything of the darkness it holds.

Sometimes, she thinks she hears her brother calling for her. Sometimes, she thinks she answers. But he never appears. 

Eventually, on a cloudless night, the tiniest sliver of moon hanging from the sky, the whispers tell her it's time.

Gathering herself, she stares into the gaping nothing. She does not think to say goodbye. Her mind has long forgotten everything else.

She dives into the deep black. 

The body that once belonged to her falls to the ground like a puppet with cut strings; a hollow prison now housing nothing.

Elsewhere, a baby opens its eyes. The shadow laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> did you get the reference?
> 
> cw: animal death, character disappearance (?) not quite death but close to it, generally sombre tone.


End file.
